Vol. 53 - Alaska Resources Library and Information Services

summer food for spotted seals.
Feder and Jewett (1981) depict small,
miscellaneous shrimp as food items for several species of fish (cod,
starry flounder) in the southeastern Bering Sea, but quantification of
use is not given.
6.4 Crangonidae
Crangonid shrimp are represented by eight or more species in the
southeastern Bering Sea (see Appendix A), of which four are common
(Crangon dalli, C. communis, Sclerocrangon boreas and Argis dentata).
As a group they are generally medium-sized shrimp dominating the 0-50 m
depths of the continental shelf (Ivanov 1969; Table 6.3).
They are an
important food source for demersal fish and invertebrates although they
do not support a direct commercial fishery in Alaska.
Crangonids eat
benthic diatoms, detritus, polychaetes, small crustaceans, crustacean
eggs and larvae, gastropods, foraminiferans and ophiuroids (Squires 1967),
and mysids captured during diel vertical migrations (Sitts and Knight
1979). They are preyed upon by sand sole (Miller 1967), starry flounder
(Feder and Jewett 1978), Pacific cod (Feder 1978), yellowfin sole (Feder
and Jewett 1981), Beluga whales and phocid seals (Lowry et al. 1981),
and Dungeness crabs, tomcod, and sculpin (Stevens et al. 1982).
Very little literature exists on the relative abundance of crangonid
stocks. Their shallow, in-shore habitat has not been extensively sampled
by suitable methods.
These species bury in the sand during the day
and thus dredging rather than trawling might yield more complete data.
Crangon dalli and A. dentata appeared in 34 and 31% of the OCSEAP 1975
tows and C. communis, A. dentata and A. ovifer appeared in 24, 29, and
708